I just saw a post on Linkedin by a lady who works in software helping retail and industrial sectors and in rang true with me, she listed what she does and doesn’t like about what people do on Linkedin – a few of these points fell heavily into what I do and don’t like too and also what I do and don’t recommend for my clients who use me for social media training and social media management.

This made me decide to create my very own “What I hate on Linkedin” blog post, so here it is;

  • I hate it when people send a connection request with no note telling me who they are or why they would like to connect (if you do include a personalised message you’ll have a far higher response rate!)
  • I hate it when people respond to my query about their connection request with a long sales pitch which has clearly been copied and pasted and shows that they have not even taken a second to look at my profile on Linkedin
  • I hate it when people post boring posts on Linkedin; it’s a business social media site so why not be social? The clue is kind of in the title is it not?
  • I hate it when people think it is the ‘new trend’ of putting one word on each sentence so you have to click to read more; while I sometimes may click to read more, I find I am quickly bored by the post and would rather the person just spits out what they want to say.
  • I hate it when people have clearly made up (as well as copying and pasting other peoples made up) stories that sell them as a wonderful person; offering a random stranger a job just because they seemed nice in the street, giving a homeless person a house or adopting 500 children to their own home because ‘it was the right thing to do’. While I encourage people to tell their story, I encourage people to tell their REAL story.

I am not alone in this thought process, many of your target audience and connections will feel the same way – use Linkedin to be social, to engage with your target audience and to grow and work on relationships with your connections while gaining new connections that you want to network with.

Linkedin is not a numbers game; it doesn’t matter how many connections you have or how many views you get of a post – what matters is how you come across and what others think of you when you are posting on Linkedin.